Forum Drama

[drumsy]

What do you guys do to combat the drama??? People mad at each other, crying, relationships, all that jazz. I know we're not immune to it, how do you as webmasters/admins/moderators handle it?

[RJ]

I think most boards have situations like this, no matter how big or small they are. Get two opinionated people - who can't agree - in one place, and the words fly.

Personally, I would issue a private warning to whoever is arguing (and if you've got board rules set out, quote those if necessary).

If the argument persists, close the thread, and issue a public warning to all involved.

If they still don't get the hint, ban them, either temporarily or permanently.

Whatever happens, as soon as things escalate, don't let it continue!

[Reeve of Shinra]

Depending on the size and nature of the issue, the only way to end it is by laying out all the cards on the table.

Set up a topic specifically for this and then start keeping it out of everywhere else. You should outline both sides and perhaps explain why each might feel that way.

Try to stay nuetral and keep your administrative hat on.

[Fquist]

Hmm. We solve fights, but at the end both parties accuse us :O

They accuse us for censoring for example.. because they should be able to talk about everything they want.

We use our admin rods to stop these fights.. but is there any way to stop the "they censor us"

About half the board hates us here. :/
(they see it as a service, not as a privilege.)

[Martin]

amen Fquist.

I love when they yell that we are violating their freedom of speech for closing or moving topics to our troll dump forum.

and they don't see it as a service, they see it as a "right" that we are obligated to provide for them, even though we get little to no financial remuneration and barely make enough to keep the doors open.

of course, that describes the worst of the trouble making users. for the most part, my users appreciate what goes into keeping the doors open for them.

[Fquist]

You are very right. Indeed, right is a better word then service.

I could rant for hours about all the trouble we've had at our, hackers, troublemakers.. We've had nothing but trouble, but still we don't know how to fix it.

I've gotten some experience tough.

At our site we want a warning system. 3 strikes, you're out. Some offenses count for half warnings, some for whole.

In my experience this helps a bit. People start crying a lot about their warnings tough.

Also, we've had trouble with our userbase. Our forums are related to a certain game. But we have miscelleneous/chit chat forums, and fans of the game invite their friends, and those invite their friends, etc. At the end our miscelleneous/chit chat forums got more popular, and junk topics like "I LUV ..." more popular then game-related topics.

I've seen a dutch site about computers handle that very good. Make people not have access to the "fun" forums until they have about x posts in the subject-related forums. Some forums need more posts then others. "The bar" needs more posts then "Stuffis generalis", the bar containing more fun miscelleneous topics, "Stuffis generalis" more serious miscelleneous topics. I've noticed that it helps pretty much against people that only want to get some fun.

[ethank]

Try to keep a zen like calm. Doesn't work always, but I try.

We had a three strikes rule, but had to put it out cause what constituted a strike? When people make it evident they need to be kicked off, its usually pretty blatant.

I do like Access Masks, because if a member is causing a lot of trouble in one particular forum (as on my site, certain forums contain certain types of people), I just block their access to it. Problem solved.

Ethan

[Fred]

I got tons of beef on my forum. I just delete it, ban users. Do it daily. Rap forums seem to attract a lot of people that think they are online thugs

[Grandmaster]

Fred, Your forums are great.

I love them, its the only decent rap board that has good users and decent info.

Good work.

[Fred]

Thanks man, appreciate it!

[Jeff Robinson]

Got Beef? is the forum that people fight and yell and *****..